The 6 most metal things in the Doom Eternal reveal

Grappling shotguns, campaign invasions, and the return of a famous demon.

The Doom Eternal reveal at QuakeCon 2018 didn't hold back. This wasn't some brief tease for the upcoming FPS and sequel to 2016's Doom: it was a lengthy and decidedly metal look at Doom Eternal in action that showed us lots of old friends (including one we haven't seen in a while), several new features (player mobility got dialed way up), intriguing concept art, and lots of gory gunplay and melee combat. We've learned way more about Doom Eternal than we expected to, but for now let's focus on the good stuff.

Here are the five most metal things in the Doom Eternal gameplay reveal.

Grappling

Doom's shotgun is an icon of gaming: even in a game with a Big Fucking Gun in it, the shotgun still reigns supreme. But did Doom Eternal somehow just make our favorite weapon even better? In the reveal, the shotgun had a grappling attachment that lets you latch onto enemies, even flying ones, and pull yourself through the air toward them.

Doom has always been a brutally fast-paced game that let us slide around the world on what felt like rocket-powered rollerskates, and 2016's Doom continued that tradition of mobility with a double-jump and mantling ability. Now we'll be swinging around levels as well. The footage also showed Doomguy using a dash ability to swiftly dodge attacks, and at one point he even legit climbed up a wall.

The Arch-vile

Well, look who's back. The Arch-vile didn't make an appearance in 2016's Doom—in fact we haven't seen him in over a decade since Doom 3 back in 2004. And on the off-chance this is your first time meeting him, he's known for his pesky habit of resurrecting dead demons, essentially making your already chaotic battles even messier.

In earlier games the Arch-vile couldn't bring back dead minibosses, only lesser entities, but that was then and this is now, so who knows? He may have a few surprises up his sleeve.

Invasions

You're not alone in Doom Eternal: a surprising new feature will allow players to invade each other's campaigns. It won't be marine-vs-marine, either. The invading player (or players, since you can form a group to invade) will take control of a monster or monsters and try to hunt down the demon-slayer.

We were only teased with this invasion feature, and didn't see it in action, but jumping into someone else's game as a demon and trying to bring them down sure sounds like fun. We hope to learn more about invasions during QuakeCon this weekend.

The Doom Universe

"We're not just making a Doom game anymore," said Marty Stratton. "We're building a Doom Universe." We saw not only gameplay footage at the reveal, but concept art of locations we'll be visiting in Doom Eternal, and they look wild and otherworldly. Doom isn't exactly known for story and lore—2016's Doom had you killing demons within moments of beginning the game—but it sounds like that might change in Eternal.

Destructible demons

When you shoot, punch, kick, or stab demons in Doom Eternal, you'll be able to see the results. "We've created a whole system for this now, and internally we call it destructible demons," said Hugo Martin at the reveal. You'll be able to see them take damage as you dish it out, as piece by piece their armor, limbs, and features become obliterated.

Can I borrow your key?

Our demon-slaying space marine has used the severed hands of the dead to unlock doors before, but how does he go about borrowing a keycard from a still-breathing (and clearly intimidated) person? Well, he's fairly polite about it, really, all things considered.